The neighbour’s toddler is under our table fists and feet flailing, my mother’s spine glacial, and I’m sat on the banquette eating kedgeree, fish flying around my head in a halo. Mountains are crowbarred out of me when we root up to another country, I shelter under the bed, years pass through me, the candlewick…
I’m sixteen, home for the holidays, hovering round Mum who pulls wet washing from the drum, when an old lover of hers tumbles out with the load like waters breaking, the narrow utility room dimming to confessional. Then coat hanger-hooked out slips a back street clinic, followed by Mum crouched on the loo in her…
Wrapped up in gilet, scarf and cap he stands across the road from me. I know he’s died but I feel caught out, living in his flat. Dodging the traffic, specs in hand, I cry, Look, I’ve kept your glasses – just changed the lenses. He looks a little rueful, says he’s living on Mont…
Although you chase me up the stairs laughing and tickle me as I hide behind my door frightened, your hand up my nightdress, and you send me a Valentine of a man baby holding a heart over his genitals, and he’s blushing and the card is saying, IF YOU CAN’T BE GOOD BE MINE, and…
I sing as your body shuts down, watch the doors of your mind fly off their hinges a white sun pulsing through your eyes, your chest an alembic, gathering you with each breath you suck in, I witness your birth as you die as you drag on your last breath, elated, finally fully alive and…
Ahead of me the trunk sways like a coffin down the corridors. My parents heave it up the stairs, drop it onto the dormitory floor. A crater opens between us. Retracing our steps, I see them off at the school entrance – turn back to unpack my loss. Stuff it into drawers under my allotted…
